San Francisco, CA - July 1, 2011 - SFCCC, a network of ten community based nonprofit partner health clinics that provide primary medical care to more than 87,000 uninsured, low-income, working poor and homeless patients each year has recently received grants from the Amgen Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, and the San Francisco Foundation.

Aligned with Amgen Foundation priority area of Quality of Care and Patient Access, their grant is for the SFCCC Street Outreach Services (SOS) program. SOS is a mobile medical van that provides high quality, non-judgmental urgent and preventive medical care to homeless San Franciscans. The SOS van travels to sites throughout the city providing health care on the streets, in parks, under freeway overpasses - anywhere homeless people live and congregate. SOS also provides care through "suitcase (a carryall containing the medical equipment needed) clinics" set up at designated locations, including soup kitchens.

The Kaiser Permanente Core Operations Support funding allows SFCCC to continue its organizational development in light of Health Care Reform (HCR) and to focus on the preservation and strengthening of the health care safety net. This is specifically aligned with the SFCCC role to improve access to care and health outcomes for all patients served by our ten partner community health clinics by continuing to upgrade and optimize systems of care.

The San Francisco Foundation grant will allow SFCCC to implement a group purchasing initiative for services used by the SFCCC and its clinics that will result in cost savings and enhanced service delivery to primary care patients. The overall goal is to develop, implement and maintain an active group purchasing / collective buying strategy for SFCCC and its partner clinics that can eventually pay for itself and, ultimately, generate cash savings that can be directed to primary care services. This includes corporate procurements such as legal advice, human resources, auditing and banking services.

"All of these grants all support the Pathway to Excellence work leading to the clinical transformation formally envisioned in the SFCCC Strategic Plan," said John Gressman, President and CEO of San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium. "These grants enable SFCCC to progress toward the goals of SFCCC partner clinic recognition as Patient Center Medical Homes; SFCCC publically reporting population based clinical data documenting high quality clinical outcomes of our patient care; SFCCC establishing clinical system integration through development of new and refinement of existing partnership with community based agencies; SFCCC clinics increasing their financial stability and viability; and SFCCC and its clinics establishing and maintaining network based standards to promote consistently excellent health care services, reporting and maximization of revenues to support patient care."